


The Pool and the Well

by JeanGraham



Category: The Man From U.N.C.L.E. (TV)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-06
Updated: 2019-09-06
Packaged: 2020-10-11 01:35:49
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,286
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20538008
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JeanGraham/pseuds/JeanGraham
Summary: Young Napoleon Solo tests a legend about reflections in wells.





	The Pool and the Well

* * *

**The Pool and the Well**

by Jean Graham  
  
  
Mosquitoes were already breeding in the new well. Napoleon  
could hear them whine when he leaned over to drop pebbles into the  
water. He knew that the splash took a long time because Kansas  
water tables were low in the summer. His father had explained that  
last week, when the well had gone in. He wondered now how the  
mosquitoes had found the new water so quickly, and whether most of  
them would end up becoming frogs' dinners.  
  
He peered over the newly-smoothed concrete rim and listened  
again, but the insects were quiet, the well dark. He couldn't even  
see where the wall ended and the water began because the sun wasn't  
high enough yet. But when it got to just the right place in the  
sky, he should be able to see his reflection.  
  
The noise of an engine approaching drowned the chirping of the  
mockingbirds in the nearby tress. Just past the gnarled fence,  
dust clouds signaled the arrival of an automobile. That would be  
his father returning from Topeka. Napoleon ran to the rail fence,  
vaulted over, and stood kicking dirt clods at the side of the road.  
  
The car that shortly came into view surprised him: it was long,  
black and shiny-new, with a rocket-shaped hood ornament that  
glinted in the bright summer light. He recognized his father  
behind the wheel as the big car lurched to a stop on the uneven  
road. A man Napoleon didn't know sat in the front seat beside him.  
  
"Hey, Napoleon!" His father turned the humming engine off and  
got out to capture his son in a welcoming hug. "How do you like  
the wheels? Isn't it a beaut?"  
  
The boy's eyes widened. "You mean it's ours?"  
  
"It will be." His father tipped a felt hat to the man who had  
emerged from the passenger side of the big car. "This is Mr.  
Auburn. He's drawing up the papers."  
  
Mr. Auburn touched the brim of his own silk-banded hat. "Hi,  
son," he said.  
  
Napoleon circled the car to inspect it from every side. In  
glittering chrome script, Lincoln Custom was emblazoned across the  
front grill and all four hubcaps. He could see himself, bent like  
in a fun-house mirror, in every rounded curve, although a fine  
coating of dust from the road had already settled over most of the  
car's shiny surface.  
  
"Sorry we couldn't make her a '42," Mr. Auburn apologized.   
"But this mess in Europe's got everybody spooked. We can't get the  
new models till the plants are convinced they won't be gearing up  
to build tanks instead."  
  
Napoleon's father shook his head slowly. "The more the  
President promises we won't go to war, the more it looks as though  
we will." He met his young son's curious stare, and evaded the  
unspoken questions by changing the subject. "You been watching the  
new well?" he asked.  
  
Napoleon nodded anxiously. "Soon as the sun's high enough, we  
can see how far up the water's come."  
  
With one hand to his hat brim, his father gazed up at the  
clear sky. "Mm," he said. "Should be about right by now. Shall  
we take a look? You mind, Mr. Auburn?"  
  
The car dealer smiled. "Not a bit. Plan to put in a new well  
myself some time before winter."  
  
Napoleon jumped the fence and raced back to the well. The two  
men followed at a slower pace, climbing the fence awkwardly in  
their business suits.  
  
The sun was almost directly overhead now. Napoleon could see  
a round blue patch of sky at the bottom of the well, and his own  
reflection peering back at him. In a moment, two more heads  
appeared beside his own.  
  
"Ah," said Mr. Auburn. "Now that's a fine well. A real fine  
well."  
  
"She'll come in higher in the fall," Napoleon said proudly.   
"After the first rains."  
  
"That's right." His father placed a strong, affectionate hand  
on Napoleon's shoulder. "What's so fascinating to you about this  
well, though?" he asked. "Shouldn't you be off tadpole fishing  
with Billy Winchell? Or didn't you finish those chores your mother  
had lined up for you this morning?"  
  
"I finished," Napoleon answered truthfully. "I just wanted...  
Well, I wondered... He cast an embarrassed glance at Mr. Auburn.   
"I wanted to ask you that question. You know."  
  
"Question?" His father pretended not to remember. "What  
question was that, son?"  
  
The boy shrugged one shoulder, a half-denial. "I asked you  
last week when the well was going in. You said you'd tell me  
later. And you said there was a story Grandpa used to tell that  
was about a well. Remember?"  
  
"Mm," his father said. "Now, you wanted to know whereabouts  
the well would come out if you could dig it all the way through the  
world. Right?"

  
Napoleon nodded. "Billy Winchell says China, but I think he's  
wrong."  
  
His rather and Mr. Auburn exchanged amused smiles, expressions  
not lost on Napoleon. "So where would it come out?" he asked  
again.  
  
His rather dropped a pebble into the bright blue pool of  
water, waiting for the splash before he answered. "I suppose it  
would depend entirely on your angle. You see, if you aimed that  
way..." He pointed to a spot on the well's rough-hewn wall.   
"...you just might come up in China. Then again, you could angle this  
other way and come out somewhere in Europe. Straight down... I'd  
figure that for someplace in the Indian Ocean. And that way...  
Well, that way's Russia." He thought for a moment. "I don't  
suppose you'd want to go there just now."  
  
"Why not? What's in Russia?"  
  
"Hm? Oh, Russians mostly. Say, I thought you wanted to hear  
Grandpa's story about the wells."  
  
"I do."  
  
His father grinned, and got that look of something-long-ago in  
his eyes. "See, he used to sit with me, when I was about your age,  
by a well like this one, only they were wood in those days. And he  
used to say that on some days in summer, wells could be magic. I  
believed him, too. Even if I never did see them."  
  
"See who?" Napoleon was all ears, eager for any story about  
his grandfather, who had been an admiral in the Great War.  
  
"Faces. The faces of people in those other countries where  
the well would come out if you could dig clear through the Earth."  
His father laughed, aware that even Mr. Auburn has settled on the  
well's rim, paying rapt attention to the tale. "You have to watch  
at just the right time on just the right day," he went on. "And  
some time, when the magic is right, you'll see someone from over  
there. Someone who's looking into his well, maybe. Looking for  
you. The trick is, though, you've both got to be looking at the  
same time. I guess maybe that's why it never worked for me.   
Magic's funny that way."  
  
Napoleon looked down at their rippling reflections in the  
water and heard the mosquitoes hum again. "Maybe it'll work for  
me," he said.  
  
"Maybe." The strong hand released his shoulder. "But don't  
you sit here all day hoping, or your mother'll work a little magic  
of her own on the seat of your trousers."  
  
Napoleon nodded, but never took his eyes from the water as his  
father and Mr.Auburn headed back to the waiting Lincoln.  
"I have enough in the bank for a good down," he heard his  
father say, "if you can carry a paper for, say, thirty a month at  
four per cent interest..."  
  
Their voices faded, as shortly did the sound of the car's  
rumbling engine. Napoleon, oblivious to the stinging sun, buzzing  
insects and the threat of an irate mother, stayed to watch the  
reflection that stared back at him from the well. He waited for it  
to change...  
  
* * *  
  
A sound that was not thunder woke Illya Nickovetch from a  
fitful sleep. He turned over beneath the coarse woolspun blanket  
and listened. Over the uniform breathing of the other young boys  
in the dormitory, the far away rumble came again, an angry giant  
pounding furiously at the gates of Kiev.  
  
There was another sound, softer and much, much nearer. It  
came from the anteroom beyond the door of the sleeping quarters: a  
low, muffled sob, almost like the mourning or some poor, lost  
spirit.  
  
Only Illya did not believe in spirits.  
  
He sat up in his bunk, pressed bare toes to the wooden floor,  
cold, even in summer, and searched with one foot until he had found  
the shoes left under the bed after 'lights out.' His fingers found  
the wall, its shelf and the single peg from which his coat hung.   
He slipped into coat and shoes at the same time, and padded  
silently across the dark room past twin rows of beds identical to  
his own, until he'd reached the door. It opened soundlessly,  
admitting him to the moonlit chill of the anteroom. Before the  
tall, vaulted window, Valentina Marinova Vdovushkin stood, a shawl  
pulled tightly around her quivering shoulders. She was their  
teacher of languages, and was most often addressed by her full name  
as befitted her age. But in the nearly three years they had spent  
here together, Illya has never before seen her like this.  
  
"Uchitsinitsa Vdovushkin," he said gently, "are you ill?"  
  
She did not appear startled at his presence. Instead, she  
turned tear-swollen eyes on him and said, "It is very late, ditya.   
You should be sleeping."  
  
"I... I must go out for a few moments," he said, ashamed of  
the lie but certain he could not have deterred her wrath in any  
other fashion. "When I awoke, I heard something like... like  
thunder. Far away. Only it was not thunder."  
  
She turned back to the window, and shook her greying head  
slowly. "You heard nothing," she insisted. "Hurry on about your  
task, Illya Nickovetch, and go back to your bed."  
  
The distant rumble came again before she'd finished speaking,  
and in the west, half-hidden by a copse of bereza trees, a flash of  
light had flickered on the horizon. Illya stepped closer to the  
window's leaded panes.  
  
He stared out at a cloud-strewn night with a moon that hung  
one-quarter-full above the empty school courtyard. The swelling  
crescent was mirrored in the small reflecting pool that lay just  
beyond the dormitory's concrete steps.  
  
"The armies have come, haven't they," Illya said to the  
window. "The soldiers and the guns..."  
  
"What talk is this? You are too young to know of such  
things!" The older women scoffed. "If there are armies to come,  
then we shall send armies to repel them. But this... This is only  
thunder. The _zernitsa,_ that is all. It is nothing to fear."  
  
In Valentina Vdovushkin's stern voice there was no longer any  
hint of the plaintive sobbing Illya had heard from inside the  
sleeping quarters. She might have been giving him a French lesson,  
except that her eyes betrayed her terror each time she looked back  
toward the bereza grove.  
  
Illya's own fears evoked a half-whispered question. "What  
will they do to us, Uchitsinitsa, when they have come here?"  
  
Valentina made a strange gesture, touching forehead, chest and  
each of her shoulders in turn. "Spare me from Germans and  
ingenious children," she murmured, then gave him a small but hardy  
shove toward the outer door. "Go, ditya, and be quick. I will  
wait for you here."  
  
Illya drew his muslin coat closer together as the dormitory  
door clicked shut behind him. He made his way slowly down the  
steps, thinking that Valentina Vdovushkin made a far better teacher  
than actress. Her lips professed strength, but her eyes spoke of  
horror.  
  
The sound, deep and ominous, came again from the west as he  
knelt beside the pool. The shadowy image that looked back showed  
him a face with unkempt blond heir, high cheekbones, and eyes that  
in a better light would have been bluer than the water. He reached  
out to dab at the reflection, watched it dissolve and flutter and  
slowly come back into its whole with the moon reigning high above  
its head.  
  
The still night, void even of insects or straying winds, was  
broken by another explosion of the distant guns. Out here, in the  
night air, they were much louder.  
  
Illya stared into the pale young face in the water and  
wondered what the soldiers would do to Kiev, to her people, to  
Valentina Vdovushkin and the children in the school. There had  
been stories, whispered tales and rumors, of Leningrad and Minsk.   
All denied. But perhaps, also all true.  
  
He touched the face in the water once more, stirred it  
vigorously, and when it had at last reformed itself, asked it  
silently if it could be as brave as Valentina Marinova Vdovushkin.  
  
He wondered what it felt like to die.  
  
For a moment, a drifting cloud obscured the moon, and turned  
his image in the pool a muted grey. The crescent traveled quickly  
out again to shine as brightly as before, and Illya blinked at his  
reflection, puzzled. For just the briefest of moments it had  
seemed there was another face, another boy -- with dark hair and  
startled eyes showing clearly that he had seen Illya in the same  
instant that Illya had seen him.  
  
But it was gone now.  
  
An illusion, of course. There was only his own face in the  
water. And Illya Nickovetch did not believe in spirits.  
  
Lights flashed beyond the trees.  
  
Staring into the pool's silent water, he waited... and  
listened to death marching toward Kiev.  
  
\-- End --  
  


See all of my fanfic and links to my pro fiction at <http://jeangraham.20m.com.>


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